Spock’s Confidence on Star Trek was Inversely Proportional to his Accuracy

Mr. Spock is the best figure in Star Trek history, according to random online lists, and the franchise has been around for seven decades. The half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock, according to Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, is essential to understanding the show's themes. He was referring specifically to themes of tolerance and humanity's capacity for development. He is shown as being the smartest member of the original series crew, capable of performing numerous complex calculations off the top of his head. He follows logic, as do all Vulcans.

Despite often telling the audience how smart Spock is and how logical his species is, the show doesn't support those claims. Every episode of Star Trek and Spock-starring movie was watched by author Julia Galef, who then kept track of how frequently he made predictions and how frequently they came true. According to the research, Spock was more likely to be mistaken when he was more certain of an outcome. In fact, Spock was proven wrong 83% of the time when he declared something to be impossible. That is a deplorable record. On the other hand, the likelihood that something would not occur increased with his level of certainty that it would.

Naturally, all of this serves as a plot device for the program, which aimed to demonstrate how human passion and intuition triumph against icy, alien logic, but you'd think they'd at least give him a 50/50 chance of succeeding given that he's half human.